{"id":98,"date":"2005-07-18T17:29:46","date_gmt":"2005-07-19T00:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/?p=98"},"modified":"2025-05-05T21:14:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T01:14:43","slug":"burn-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/98","title":{"rendered":"Burn Marks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Burn Marks<\/a><\/em> (1990) Sara Paretsky<\/a><\/p>\n

V.I.’s aunt Elena shows up on her doorstop at 3 in the morning after escaping the fire that burned down the hotel where she was living. As an alcoholic deadbeat aunt is not the idea roomate, V.I. gives her 24 hours to find a new place and get out, but of course that isn’t the end of the story, and V.I. ends up investigating the arson.<\/p>\n

I was set to give up on this series after this book, until the last few chapters. V.I. is still a jerk, and I was tired of waiting for her to reform, except that at the end of this book V.I. finally has a long overdue talk with Bobby Mallory. So I’m hoping that their relationship will change in future books, and perhaps her relationships with other will change as well. I’m hoping anyway.<\/p>\n

This story, although good, jumps around a bit, and I found myself wondering several times precisely why she was continuing with her investigations, but I suppose it was the fact that she’d been told not to that pushed her to continue.<\/p>\n

For 1990 V.I. was still fighting a lot of sexism–sexism that I don’t remember existing to that degree at that time, but as the stories do not seem to be set in any particular year–and she seems only to have aged a year or two since the first book set in 1978–perhaps they are set in the past, when sexism was still blatant, and less subtle than you find today.<\/p>\n

But to give Sara Paretsky her due, she does try to give V.I. realistic injuries, and a somewhat realistic recover from those injuries, although I do have to wonder: who is paying for all these hospital visits? Can a private investigator afford good health insurance? (Actually, I wonder this about most hard boiled mysteries I read, where the hero ends up banged up and in need of major medical care. Now wonder they’re all poor. All those hospital bills.)<\/p>\n

So the story in this book wasn’t quite as good as previous book, but I have hopes that V.I. is going to stop being a complete jerk, and read the next book in the series.<\/p>\n

But this is her last chance. If I still find her maddening in the next book, I’m giving up, selling the books back, and finding a new series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burn Marks (1990) Sara Paretsky V.I.’s aunt Elena shows up on her doorstop at 3 in the morning after escaping the fire that burned down the hotel where she was living. As an alcoholic deadbeat aunt is not the idea roomate, V.I. gives her 24 hours to find a new place and get out, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,291],"tags":[861],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-paper","tag-sara-paretsky"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piQkW-1A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":95,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/95","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":0},"title":"Killing Orders","author":"Michelle","date":"July 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Killing Orders (1985) Sara Paretsky In Killing Orders V.I.'s bitter and unpleasant aunt asks her to look into a matter for her--securities have been forged at the church where Aunt Rosa works, and as everyone who had access to the safe is under suspicion, she is on leave from her\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mystery"","block_context":{"text":"Mystery","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/mystery"},"img":{"alt_text":"killing orders.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.klishis.com\/Books\/images\/killing%20orders.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":96,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/96","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":1},"title":"Blood Shot","author":"Michelle","date":"July 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Blood Shot (1988) Sara Paretsky V.I. Warshawski reluctantly heads back to the old neighborhood--her childhood next door neighbor wants her help in solving the mystery of her past. V.I.'s mother had befriended the single mother next door, and made V.I. take care of Caroline, the little girl. Now, as her\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mystery"","block_context":{"text":"Mystery","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/mystery"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=randomreading-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0440204208","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":94,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/94","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":2},"title":"Indemnity Only and Deadlock","author":"Michelle","date":"July 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Indemnity Only (1982) and Deadlock (1984) Sara Paretsky I used to own the V.I. Warshawski series, but in a fit of pique--and shelf space squeeze--I sold them all. I recently decided that I wanted to give them another chance, which means that I needed to reread them, which means I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mystery"","block_context":{"text":"Mystery","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/mystery"},"img":{"alt_text":"indemnity only.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.klishis.com\/Books\/images\/indemnity%20only.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5330,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/5330","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":3},"title":"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo","author":"Michelle","date":"July 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005\/2008) Stieg Larsson translated by Reg Keeland I read this the summer I broke my ankle. Because of that, much of my memory of it was fuzzy, both because I read a lot that summer and because I was taking a lot of pain\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mystery"","block_context":{"text":"Mystery","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/mystery"},"img":{"alt_text":"The-Girl-with-the-Dragon-Tattoo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/The-Girl-with-the-Dragon-Tattoo.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11963,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/11963","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":4},"title":"Seance on a Summer’s Night","author":"Michelle","date":"June 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Seance on a Summer's Night (2018) Josh Lanyon Artemus Bancroft has returned to Green Lanterns, the home where his aunt raised him after his parents died, but he's not quite sure why he's there, aside from a cryptic request. Come as soon as you can, Artie, Aunt Halcyone had written.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "7\/10"","block_context":{"text":"7\/10","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/7-10"},"img":{"alt_text":"Seance on a Summers Night","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Seance-on-a-Summers-Night.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":355,"url":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/355","url_meta":{"origin":98,"position":5},"title":"Aunt Dimity’s Death","author":"Michelle","date":"March 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Aunt Dimity's Death (1992) Nancy Atherton In my opinion, this story took off when the ghost appeared. Until then, the story was okay, but I was moderately frustrated by the bickering between the two characters that were obviously destined to fall in love with each other. Initially, I thought the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mystery"","block_context":{"text":"Mystery","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/archives\/category\/mystery"},"img":{"alt_text":"Aunt Dimity's Death","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.klishis.com\/Books\/images\/aunt_dimitys_death.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}